Allowing Gay Marriage Would Make Moms, Dads Irrelevant, Utah Says

By
Carlos Santoscoy
Published:
March 15, 2014

Upholding a federal judge's decision
legalizing gay marriage in Utah would make moms and dads irrelevant
to children, Utah attorneys claim in a new court filing.

On December 20, 2013, U.S. District
Judge Robert J. Shelby struck down Amendment 3, the state's 2004
voter-approved constitutional amendment limiting marriage to
heterosexual couples. For the next 17 days before the Supreme Court
granted a stay in the ruling, Utah was the 18th state to
legalize same-sex marriage.

Affirming Shelby's ruling would “impose
– by judicial fiat rather than democratic processes – the novel
principle that marriage is whatever emotional bond any two (or more)
people say it is,” Utah attorneys wrote.

“It would thereby enshrine in federal
law the corrosive principle that moms and dads are interchangeable
and, ultimately, irrelevant to children.”

Additionally, the brief states, such a
ruling would harm those who oppose marriage equality.

“It would also unfairly dismiss the
majorities in more than half of the States – and numerous judges –
as irrational bigots.”

The state also argues in its 108-page
filing that affirming of Shelby's decision would be “an
unprincipled judicial wrecking ball hurling toward an even more
important arena of traditional state authority.”

“[T]he fact that different States
have thus far chosen different paths is not a sign of political
weakness; it is a sign of a healthy and diverse national republic.
If affirmed by this Court, however, the district court's decision
would terminate within this Circuit that State-by-State
experimentation and all the democratic participation and debate that
go with it. As to the subject of marriage, it would bring active
liberty to a screeching halt, replacing it with a homogenized,
one-size-fits-all federal solution. An affirmance would thereby
destroy any opportunity for the kind of democratic compromise and
accommodation that could otherwise ultimately produce, in each State,
a peaceful and relatively harmonious resolution of what is now, in
many places, a highly contentious issue.”